“...After
twenty-five years in business we have a good company with long-term
dedicated employees, but we needed professional guidance to better
compete in today’s market. During the course of the project [with
American Management], we implemented a sales management and incentive
compensation plan, established job cost reporting using actual cost to
track profit margins, and put in place a predetermined profit plan with
profit sharing… I feel that with a strong commitment by all employees
we will achieve the identified three-year return on investment of about
$904,950...”

Small businesses are the
backbone of our American cities and contribute significantly to the
stability and health of our nation’s economy. There are 23 million small
businesses in the United States that represent 64% of the 2.5 million new
jobs created each year. Helping these small business owners improve their
profits and sales brings immeasurable benefits to our cities and
metropolitan areas.

Last fall at the 1999
Leadership Meeting in Denver, Conference President Denver Mayor Wellington
E. Webb and the executive leadership challenged Conference Executive
Director J. Thomas Cochran and his management team to establish a small
business/city resource initiative to help Mayors interact more effectively
with small business owners and federal agencies.

As the world welcomed in the
new millennium, Cochran launched the nation’s first small business/city
resource partnership between the Conference and American Management
Services of Waltham, MA, entitled Partner America™. Designed to provide
management expertise, technical assistance, education and government
procurement opportunities to small and mid-sized firms in every state and
hundreds of cities across the nation, Partner America™ is the first
comprehensive long-term public-private initiative focused on American
small businesses.

Partner America™ combines
the resources available from cities and federal government agencies with
the small business expertise of American Management to offer
profit-improvement management programs and services over the next decade
to small and mid-sized firms in cities and metropolitan areas throughout
the United States.

According to Mayor Webb, “we
created Partner America™ with American Management to equip Mayors with
new initiatives designed to strengthen the local economy, bring federal
resources to cities and metropolitan areas, increase the tax base, and
create a vital and sustainable business community”. Through Partner
America™, local Mayors, the Conference and American Management will
aggressively advocate for small business development and growth, and will
offer hands-on business training events on a local level.

Partner America™ will debut
at the 68th Winter Meeting this week.

For more information on this
program, please contact Jennifer Johnson at 202-293-7330.